Flexible working is touted to be the way of the future, with managers who were once unsure of the positives of working from home now experiencing for the first time just how well they and their teams are managing to get by.

This has given many businesses reason to consider allowing staff to work flexibly (mixing up their work week with time at home and in the office), while others plan on doing away with offices altogether, given the increased productivity they’ve experienced since early March, paired with the cost savings and improved wellbeing of their staff.

However, in the rush to get everyone WFH ready when Covid-19 hit, some businesses didn’t look at their current and future networking needs.

Is your current network fit for purpose?

Many businesses had to improvise with their networking at the beginning on Covid-19 in Australia, so if you felt the strain in the early days of full-time WFH, you’re not alone.

And with a considerable proportion of the workforce expecting to work from home some (or all) of the time in the future, it makes sense to check in and ensure your network is suited to the increase in remotely located staff while still serving the business’ needs at any physical locations.

Optimising bandwidth, performance and application usage in all locations will be key, and while stopgap solutions may have done the job during the worst of the pandemic, scalability and security are also important considerations for the long term.

Need to find out if your network architecture suits your current and future needs. We can help!

Including remote users in network monitoring

Monitoring is key in determining your networking needs to begin with, and once the architecture has been built out, ensuring it’s working optimally.

The vast number of people working outside of the office has tested IT teams, especially those who have traditionally focussed on on-premise networks and have been in control of all aspects of the technology. Troubleshooting issues with an employee’s WiFi and personal devices is a new challenge, so being able to view entire networks, including employee endpoints, allows IT teams to troubleshoot issues before they become larger problems.

For example, to do this, endpoint agents can be added to devices – be it company provided or BYOD – to monitor how the device performs and how the network it is connected to is working.

Security-conscious users will be pleased to know that this form of monitoring looks only at things like WiFi speed and application connections, not the actual data contained within programs. But this does raise an interesting point about how privacy may be traded (in some cases) in return for more flexible working arrangements.

Balancing internal networking and external facing systems

For employees who are able to work within the business’ physical location, their access to wired networks won’t need to change. But those who choose to work from other locations will need to access company networks another way.

Users on internal networks will be able to use company intranets and shared drives as usual, while VPNs (virtual private networks) are recommended to be used by remote workers to connect to company networks as they allow the user’s device to behave as it would if they were in the office.

VPNs allow only trusted users to communicate through them, increasing your security even when some elements are out of your control, and allow for remote access from your IT team, which helps with solving technical issues from a distance.

If you’ve never set a VPN up before and need some advice, we’re here to help .

If you’re looking for a solution beyond VPNs, there are options such as VDI (virtual desktop) that may suit your business. Users see a virtual desktop (which sits within a centralised server) with an array of applications they can use. The benefits include allowing users to customise their desktop, and as each machine still acts separately, this allows additional security benefits for businesses or individuals who deal with confidential information on a regular basis.

And of course, the prevalence of SaaS products such as Office 365, Salesforce and many others means that users can login via a browser, so if you can ensure users have access to stable internet at home, they can work in much the same way as they would in the office.

Need a network strategy? Contact us today to discuss your individual needs.

Businesses that invest in SDWAN reap many benefits – easy to set up and manage, rapid rollout, cost optimisation, improved connectivity – however, there is one difficult decision businesses need to make when they choose an SDWAN solution, who will manage and monitor the network infrastructure. Will the solution be self-managed or fully managed? This decision can be somewhat easy from some businesses; however, for others, it will require more consideration and planning.

Deciding should be made forthright. Businesses need to ask themselves whether they have the internal capability of meeting the service level agreements (SLA), hardware and software patching and updates, installation, and configuration, and supporting the SDWAN and underlay network connections. If a business does not have the required resources and skills in-house, it is strongly advised that it considers having its network fully managed by a managed SDWAN service provider.Be rewarded. Choose Oreta as your MSP

Why should a business consider a managed SDWAN service provider?

If your business has multiple branches and you would like an SD-WAN solution to be rolled out seamlessly, with a guaranteed service level agreement (SLAs), no compatibility issues, reduced and controlled management overheads, regular updates to infrastructure, then your business should consider a managed SD-WAN service.

Implementing and managing your SDWAN solution internally often requires increasing your resources and lengthening the amount of time it will take before you start to see the benefits. It could be very costly, and there is a risk of high turnover during the rollout of the project.

With managed SD-WAN services, the provider will supply all the hardware, software, networking infrastructure needed to deliver the right level of service – for example, connectivity for X number of branches – with appropriate service-level agreements (SLAs) for uptime and performance. This will certainly help you taking control of costs on implementation and management while achieving great outcomes.

Many service providers will focus on providing an end-to-end service, from installation, troubleshooting, monitoring, and optimising the SD-WAN units across each of your business’s workplaces, which in turn will free your IT team up to focus on the applications which will generate business growth.

What if your business decides to implement SD-WAN internally?

If your business has a highly skilled IT team that is guaranteed to be with you for the entire life of the project, can make informed decisions on architecture, has a flexible installation timeframe and budget, which can factor in unforeseen costs, then completing the project internally might be the most appropriate way forward. However, to take full advantage of the technology and capitalise on the solution, there may still be a need to develop new skill sets.

A well-structured vendor-selection process and a clearly defined pilot are critical when choosing which SD-WAN solution (e.g. Velocloud, Cisco Meraki, Cisco Viptela) will best fit the business’s specific needs and continuing to educate the IT team. During the pilot, businesses should use the time to identify operational challenges and how the organisation will best adapt to the changes, and how the solution will best address the real pain points (e.g. improving application performance).

Warning – If your business chooses to self-manage its SD-WAN and doesn’t have a strong internal networking capability, here’s a health warning. The benefits of SDWAN are widely publicised (i.e. zero-touch set-up; centralised control and rapid reconfiguration; reduction in engineering effort; easy optimisation of application traffic management enabled through smart technology and a ready repository of ready-made rules and application policies; all supported by unparalleled performance, visibility, and analytics). While much of this may be true, businesses should still very carefully assess whether they do have the skills and knowledge to self-manage from end to end. It just not that simple, and many things can still go wrong, at a cost. Is it worth the risk?

Be rewarded. Choose Oreta as your MSP

Value-added services

In addition to the abovementioned benefits, a managed SD-WAN service can offer businesses value-added conveniences that are beyond just an end-to-end service, including advisory, assessment, design, implementation of an SDWAN solution.

These services can help businesses manage the different stages of an entire solution cycle, from developing the strategy, vendor/solution selection and evaluation, architecture and design, and implementation. Each of these steps demands a highly skilled team and intensive effort, both of which are beyond a business’s internal IT team. And yet each step is necessary to ensure the right solution is implemented and it delivers the outcome that aligns best with your business strategies.

Yes, we want to work with a managed SD-WAN service provider. How do we choose the right one?

• Select a capable managed service provider (MSP) with whom you can work with – is it the right fit?
• Consider any gaps in the offer, which could influence the success of the solution.
• Identify the key objectives of your SDWAN project to help your decisions on budget and cost control.
• Define the responsibilities between your IT team and the MSP so that there is no stone left unturned. Ensure that both parties have a clear understanding of the service, operational, and commercial impact of these responsibilities.
• Develop a view of your end-state network architecture- what are your business’s medium to long-term goals?
• Maintain some competitive tension but leave things open for ongoing collaboration.

Be rewarded. Choose Oreta as your MSP